The Timaru Herald WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1940 The Soviet's Predicament

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21702, 10 July 1940, Page 6

The Timaru Herald WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1940 The Soviet's Predicament

IN the House of Representatives last week Mr C. Morgan Williams, the Government member for Kaiapoi. expressed the view that Russia would come into the war to aid Great Britain. Many, perhaps, share this opinion, but there should be no illusion about the fact that Russia will not come into the war to aid Britain, or to aid any other nation. So far the Soviet has moved only to protect its own interests and to consolidate its own position. Self-interest, is the keystone of Russian policy and it will remain so. However, it seems equally beyond dispute that the Soviet must be profoundly disturbed by events of the past three months. Moscow, when it virtually set the match to Europe's war magazine by entering into a pact with Nazi Germany, could not have anticipated that the European situation would develop as it has done. It could not have been anticipated last August that in less than a year the British Empire would stand as the last bulwark against the domination of Europe by the Nazis and their Italian Fascist allies. Stalin last August was eager to have war started in Europe after he had been reasonably assured that the campaign would be in the west, leaving him free to do whatever he liked in the east. He would have been counting on a long war from which both sides would emerge exhausted. To keep the struggle going it is probable that he had planned to lean first to one side and then the other and in the finish Russia would be the strongest surviving power. A recent despatch from Washington published in the New York Times says that reports from Moscow, even in May, speak of something approaching a panic on the part of Soviet rulers and, while Stalin was as inaccessible as ever in his Kremlin headquarters, there was every reason fol believing that this feeling had communicated itself to him. “The spectre of German troops on the steppes,” says the despatch, “appears to have arisen.’’ Stalin must believe that if Hitler gains complete control in Europe Russia would be reduced to the status of a satellite at best, and there is the less pleasant likelihood that Hitler might even decide to take a piece off the country and assume control of the Soviet regime. Soviet fear of German ascendancy is a possible explanation of Ihe recent seizure of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, for by putting a grip upon Rumania Stalin may hope to place Germany in his power through controlling the Rumanian oil wells and it may be that in this he has a fairly stout weapon. Russia and Rumania are Germany’s only sources for supplies of oil. She can get her oil from nowhere else while Britain holds command of the sea. For months after the war started prominent, Soviet spokesmen were violently anti-Ally in their speeches, but as far as is known there has been appreciable modification of this attitude more recently. The German peril has now become too real. That approaches of some kind have entered the realm of diplomatic practicability was proved a few weeks ago when Sir Stafford Cripps, an uncompromising Socialist, was appointed British ambassador in Moscow. Such a dplomatic representative may be able to do exceedingly useful work, but it must be remembered always that the Soviet's own interests come first. Nevertheless it is more than likely that the discomfiture of Germany will soon become a major Russian interest.